Joined: Jul. 2021
Posts: 1,052
Likes: 548
Reports of the Bruins’ demise were premature.
I can’t believe people are criticizing him for not taking less money. He’s still playing at a $9M or more level and he’s never had a contract with more than $6.875M AAV. He owes them nothing. Letang and Ovechkin were in similar situations, slightly younger but also in a position to take a discount late in their careers to help their teams remain contenders, and they took pretty much full market value. In fact, in at least Ovechkin’s case, I felt like the team decided to pay him a bit of a premium in recognition of him having been underpaid for so long. You could argue that Bergeron deserved similar treatment. One of the biggest reasons Boston has been a perennial contender is that he and Marchand, and more recently Pastrnak, have been hugely underpaid, equating to an extra $10M per year in cap space.